A Few Perfect Words

[Brad Young]

Jon, nice job letting us hear from Martha. I wouldn't have expected Elton John to talk in that way. I'd like to have heard what he said.

[clink]

 Elton was revisiting an impression that inspired an early song. I was surprised and pleased that in the same week as this thread about war history began on a climbing forum, to hear that a pop icon gave credence to our soldiers sacrifice and participation in a war. Humbling reminders of what this freedom I am enjoying today cost someone else.
 

[JC w KC redux]

Okay - I'll bite. What was the song?

[clink]

and “Oceans Away” is a tribute to World War II soldiers, dedicated to his father, Capt. Robert Taupin.

Might be this one. WWII not WWI tribute. A tribute nonetheless.

[Brad Young]

Most of the people here have heard of U.S. Army General David Petraeus. Petraeus led the 101st Airmobile Division in the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Later, he focussed on counterinsurgency doctrine and training (COIN). In a very unusual step he included many non-military people as he and his study group at Fort Leavenworth wrote the new Army/Marine Counterinsurgency Field Manual.

Late, in 2007 Petraeus got to implement the new COIN doctrine; President Bush put him in charge of operations in Iraq, where his new approach, plus a surge of American troops, led to a huge drop in violence, almost a total end to the insurgency and near civil war.

In between his leading the 101st and his stint at Fort Leavenworth, Petraeus had a very difficult job: he was in charge of recruiting and training a new Iraqi army in Iraq. This was in a "country" that was then basically falling apart, one severely divided along sectarian and national lines, one with a decades long history already of fielding quite ineffective military forces.

He did the best he could with what he had. Even up to this day parts of the Iraqi army he helped train are good. But most of it isn't (as witnessed by the recent disintegration in June in the face of ISIS attacks). Most of the Iraqi army, like the "country" of Iraq, is divided by hatreds and distrust. Most of the Iraqi army was and is pretty bad.

Petraeus had the perfect words to describe his duty; his job of trying to train a force in those conditions (this duty was in 2004), with the resources he had, and with the "recruits" presented to him. Petraeus said that it was like:

"Building the world's largest aircraft, while in flight, while it's being designed, and while it's being shot at."

That sounds like a hell of a job to have to do!

[clink]

That sounds like a hell of a job to have to do!

Who would do that except under "orders"?

[waldo]

"The lamps are going out all over Europe," he said. "We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."

   Brad, have you read "A Soldier of the Great War" by Mark Helprin?  If not, it's worth your time.

[Brad Young]

   Brad, have you read "A Soldier of the Great War" by Mark Helprin?  If not, it's worth your time.

Oh yes.

Generally my military reading is limited to pure non-fiction. But that book was very worth the read. I actually felt like it was much longer than, but in the same quality class as two other great works of military fiction, "The Red Badge of Courage," and "All Quiet on the Western Front."

[clink]

Diplomatically speaking, does the world need more French Peacekeepers?

Through the French eye of design: May 2010
thefrencheye.blogspot.com400 × 270Search by image
... forces issued these shorts and sleeveless tops to the French peace keepers. I wonder how many other nations have gone along with this cut.

[mynameismud]

butt the real question is do they have lace camo undies

[Brad Young]

Check out some of the IDF women who served in the 1960s. They had nice uniforms and ready to go Uzis.

Now, back to serious subjects on this thread...

[mynameismud]

lacy panties?

[mynameismud]

"We laughed and joked together, having forgotten war altogether," Rowden wrote

No Man's Land, Christmas Eve, 1914

100 Years since WWI Christmas truce.  An impromptu truce broke out on the front lines during WWI.  The war would continue for three to four more years.  The Western Front ran from the North Sea to the Swiss border.

The may have started on Christmas Eve but Christmas Day was probably the quietest day on the Western Front.  The war went on for another four years and Generals on both sides made sure this did not happen again.  The truce was not along the entire front but in some places it lasted past the New Year.

[Brad Young]

By the time "the Great War" ended (we call it World War One now), the Allied countries that survived were led by strong men, men who'd come to leadership positions through the crucible of world war.

David Llyod George was the British Prime Minister. He'd come to the job in 1916, when the prewar government fell and a coalition government took over to continue the war effort.

France was led by it's Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau. He'd come into his position as the whole French leadership changed in reaction to the French Armies' 1917 mutiny. Clemenceau led France to ultimate victory in the war. In doing so he acquired the nickname "Le Tigre" (The Tiger), for his aggressive war policies. He was also known as an intelligent strategist, and was sometimes compared to the most famous French general of all time.

And Woodrow Wilson was president of the United States. Wilson had a reputation for high intelligence, and, especially for being a man of principle and conscience. Wilson's "Fourteen Points" for peace and his concept of a "League of Nations" were idealistic (but, it turned out, unworkable) ideas designed to keep world peace for the long term.

All three participated in the post-war Paris Peace Conference. All three disagreed on many basic and not-so-basic terms to demand of, and impose on, Germany.

The negotiations were long and hard. There was shouting. Delegates walked out. And this among allies.

Eventually, after months, a treaty was finalized (the treaty of Versailles - it was so punitive toward Germany that many historians feel that it led directly to World War Two). The leaders/negotiators were all exhausted by the end. They went home.

Once home in Britain, Llyod George was asked "how he thought he had done" in trying to accomplish British goals at the Versailles Conference. Lloyd George replied with a few perfect words:
 
"Not badly, considering I was seated between Jesus Christ and Napoleon."

[Brad Young]

Norman Cota was born May 30, 1893, in Chelsea, Massachusetts. A West Point graduate, by June 1944 Cota was a 51 year old Brigadier General and the Assistant Commander of the United States 29th Infantry Division.

The 29th was one of two U.S. divisions to go ashore at Omaha Beach in Normandy on June 6th (“D-Day”). Of the two U.S. invasion beaches on June 6th, Omaha was by far the harder fight. Anyone who has seen the opening 20 minutes of the movie “Saving Private Ryan” has seen what Omaha was like; a slaughter of men being mowed down as landing craft doors dropped to the sand, artillery, mines, mortars and machine guns taking soldiers down en masse. Those that survived crawled in the sand, huddled against the sea-wall, or cowered in shell holes or behind beach obstacles, trying only to live.

Omaha was a near-run thing; so near that at one point U.S. General Omar Bradley was within minutes of ordering the landing there abandoned and the men already ashore left to their fate. Afterward they called it “Bloody Omaha.” Over 2,000 U.S. soldiers died in one day on Omaha and more than that number were wounded.

Norman Cota was a huge part of the reason that Omaha didn’t fail, that the landing there succeeded - by an extremely slim margin - in creating a beachhead.

Cota may have been the oldest soldier to set foot on Omaha Beach on D-Day. He may also have been the highest ranking officer to come ashore.

An hour after the first landings, aware of the chaos, confusion, and death then prevailing on the beach, he rode a landing craft into a crossfire of bullets, and artillery and mortar explosions. After stepping onto the beach, he strode upright across the flat and totally exposed terrain. He approached a group of soldiers pinned down by enemy fire next to a sand dune. Aware that the invasion itself was at stake he said perhaps the most famous words of his life to that group:

“Gentlemen, we are being killed on the beaches. Let us go inland and be killed.”

I simply can not imagine the courage it took to walk across that beach. To stand and address a group of soldiers doing everything they could to just not die. How could he have hoped to survive? But he did it. With a few perfect words he made it clear to these soldiers that, although they were all probably going to die that day, they might as well die fighting instead of cowering. His words and his leadership started a process; it started those soldiers fighting back. The effect wasn’t instantaneous, but it started.

The Germans had put up barbed wire fences to obstruct the Allies' path off the beach. A soldier placed a Bangalore torpedo – a tube filled with high explosives – under one fence and blew it away. The first soldier through the breach was killed by sniper fire. The men following him froze. Cota saw what was happening and raced into the breach. He led the surviving soldiers through the gap in the fence and up a steep bluff to overtake a German gun embankment.  At one point he got ahead of his men and stood waiting for them, twirling his .45 on his finger.

Norman Cota was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross  for his leadership that day. The DSC is the second highest award the United States can give for battlefield conduct. I’ve always thought it a travesty that he wasn’t awarded the Medal of Honor. For the courage, in the face of what he must have known - known - would be certain death, to act, to inspire, and, to speak a few perfect words.

[Brad Young]

On this Memorial Day I'm extending "a few" to "many." Many words by an American soldier about to go into battle for the first time. To his wife who he feared he would never see again.

The soldier, Sullivan Ballou was a successful, 32-year-old attorney from Providence, Rhode Island. When Abraham Lincoln called for volunteers in the wake of Fort Sumter, Ballou enlisted in the 2nd Rhode Island Infantry, where he was elected major. By mid-July, 1861 Ballou and his unit were in camp near the nation's capital. The movement of federal forces into Virginia, and with it First Bull Run, the first major battle of the American Civil war, was imminent.

Here's a video link to what may be the most poignant, perfect letter ever written by a soldier to his family.

On this day, as a favor, I ask that Mudn'Crud readers listen to this, if at all, with their eyes closed and giving it's three and a half minutes their full listening concentration (I have never been able to listen to this letter without crying):

Here are the full words of the letter:

"My very dear Sarah:

The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days - perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write you again, I feel impelled to write lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more.

Our movement may be one of a few days duration and full of pleasure - and it may be one of severe conflict and death to me. Not my will, but thine 0 God, be done. If it is necessary that I should fall on the battlefield for my country, I am ready. I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in, the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans upon the triumph of the Government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution. And I am willing - perfectly willing - to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government, and to pay that debt.

But, my dear wife, when I know that with my own joys I lay down nearly all of yours, and replace them in this life with cares and sorrows - when, after having eaten for long years the bitter fruit of orphanage myself, I must offer it as their only sustenance to my dear little children - is it weak or dishonorable, while the banner of my purpose floats calmly and proudly in the breeze, that my unbounded love for you, my darling wife and children, should struggle in fierce, though useless, contest with my love of country?

I cannot describe to you my feelings on this calm summer night, when two thousand men are sleeping around me, many of them enjoying the last, perhaps, before that of death -- and I, suspicious that Death is creeping behind me with his fatal dart, am communing with God, my country, and thee.

I have sought most closely and diligently, and often in my breast, for a wrong motive in thus hazarding the happiness of those I loved and I could not find one. A pure love of my country and of the principles have often advocated before the people and "the name of honor that I love more than I fear death" have called upon me, and I have obeyed.

Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me to you with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly on with all these chains to the battlefield.

The memories of the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me, and I feel most gratified to God and to you that I have enjoyed them so long. And hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when God willing, we might still have lived and loved together and seen our sons grow up to honorable manhood around us. I have, I know, but few and small claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me - perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar -- that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battlefield, it will whisper your name.

Forgive my many faults, and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless and foolish I have oftentimes been! How gladly would I wash out with my tears every little spot upon your happiness, and struggle with all the misfortune of this world, to shield you and my children from harm. But I cannot. I must watch you from the spirit land and hover near you, while you buffet the storms with your precious little freight, and wait with sad patience till we meet to part no more.

But, O Sarah! If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the garish day and in the darkest night -- amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours - always, always; and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath; or the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.

Sarah, do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again.

As for my little boys, they will grow as I have done, and never know a father's love and care. Little Willie is too young to remember me long, and my blue eyed Edgar will keep my frolics with him among the dimmest memories of his childhood. Sarah, I have unlimited confidence in your maternal care and your development of their characters. Tell my two mothers his and hers I call God's blessing upon them. O Sarah, I wait for you there! Come to me, and lead thither my children.

--Sullivan"

Sullivan Ballou was killed the next day at the First Battle of Bull Run.

[Brad Young]

I have to admit that I've never quite understood the concept of praying before battle. The whole juxtaposition of war, battle and killing just doesn't seem to jibe with the concepts of peace, love and understanding that form the core of all major religions. Still, it's always been done; almost all armies have prayed to their God for success in killing their enemies.

I recently came across a favorite such prayer. "Favorite?" Yes, favorite. I may not quite get the concept, but I can still admire the content.

In this case the prayer was made by Sir Jacob Astley, Sergeant Major General of the Royalist Foot, just before the battle of Edgehill, in 1642.

This was an early battle in the English Civil War ("civil war;" another phrase that's never made sense). The war came about because attempts at compromise between King Charles and Parliament had broken down. Each raised large armies to gain their way by force of arms. In October, at his temporary base near Shrewsbury, King Charles decided to march on London in order to force a decisive confrontation with Parliament's main army, commanded by the Earl of Essex.

Late on 22 October, both armies unexpectedly found the enemy to be close by. The next day, the Royalist army descended from Edge Hill to force battle.

One suspects that Sir Jacob Astley knew a bit about battle. He must have known it was intense, terrifying and risky. He must have known that his men would be concentrating totally, that there wouldn't likely be time, while fighting, to even think about anything else. His prayer was short, sweet and right to the point. He said:

“Lord, thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget thee, forget thou not me.”

A few perfect words.

[clink]

 A prayer made by a mind comprehending first the reality before his eyes, and yet able to invoke divine possibility. Decidedly  adept.

 

[F4?]

"Is that hold loose"

Perfect words from mungie as I lead up heavens gate 20 something odd years ago.

Sadly a nice cobble would later disappear.

[Brad Young]

Winston Churchill is without a doubt one of the two figures I admire most in human history (the other is Abraham Lincoln). He made many, many brilliant comments, many funny comments and many that were both. So, with only slight editorial, a few of his more perfect words:

-  "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."  (I always try to remember this one when I'm talking about climbing ethics.)

-  "If you're going through hell, keep going."  (So obvious - after you read his words.)

-  "This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read."  (Short and to the point is always the hardest way to write.)

-  "Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."  (True when he said it, true in the past, true now.)

-  "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."  (True when he said it, indisputably and painfully true now.)

-  "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else."  (Hey, what can we say, we get there eventually.)

-  "I am easily satisfied with the very best."

-  "I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod."

-  "I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter."  (I can just see God wincing at the truth contained in this one.)

-  "Mr. Attlee is a very modest man. Indeed he has a lot to be modest about."  (About a fellow British politician.)

-  "We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."  (Do times really change all that much?)

-  "In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies."

-  "History will be kind to me for I intend to write it"  (And did he ever!)

-  "If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce."

And, on the humor side, this exchange between Nancy Astor and Winston Churchill:

Astor to Churchill:  “Winston, if I were your wife I’d put poison in your tea!”

Churchill in response: “And madam, if I were your husband I’d drink it.”

(Oh for a leader of his character in America, now.)